refuto

Forms

refūtō (present infinitive refūtāre, perfect active refūtāvī, supine refūtātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin re- (“back”) + -fūtō, with the element found also in cōnfūtō (“to check, silence”).^[2][1][3] The origin of -fūtō is uncertain: de Vaan finds the comparison with Old English bēatan (“to strike”) attractive, but Germanic points to a different final consonant, and he considers a substrate root meaning "to strike".^[4] The TLL refers it to a root *bʰeut- "to strike", perhaps also in fūstis (“club”).^[3] Festus derived it from fārī (“to speak”), with ⟨a⟩ turned into ⟨u⟩.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it first in the orator Crassus; de Vaan's first author is Lucretius.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

It first means to check or drive back: Cicero says that Roman generals thought those nations should rather be checked by war than provoked.^[2][5] From this comes the sense of refuting a statement or an opponent, as when Cicero says that Brutus was refuted by jokes no less than by tragic speeches.^[2] The TLL counts it 27 times in Cicero and 15 in Quintilian, but only once or twice in other authors before Suetonius, and rarely in verse.^[3] Church Latin glosses it resist, oppose, refute, repress.^[6] It survives in Italian rifiutare (“to refuse”) and other Italian and Rhaeto-Romance dialects.^[3]

Timeline

• 96–55 BC – Lucretius uses it.^[4][3][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of checking nations by war and of refuting an opponent.^[2][7]
• c. 35–95/96 AD – Quintilian uses it often.^[3][7]
• 1510s – English refute is borrowed from Latin, partly through French, first meaning to refuse or reject.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To check, drive back, repress, restrain.^[2][5][6][1]
2. To refute, disprove a statement or an opponent.^[2][6][1]

Word family

• irrefutatus
• refutabilis
• refūtātiō
• refutator
• refutatorius
• refūtātus

Related words

• cōnfūtō
• English refute

Usage notes

Döderlein groups it with cōnfūtō and refellō: refūtō and cōnfūtō mean refuting in any way, refellō by convincing arguments; the one who refūtat defends himself against arguments, the one who cōnfūtat attacks them and shows they are worthless.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
7. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Döderlein, Ludwig (1874), Döderlein’s Hand-book of Latin Synonymes, tr. H. H. Arnold, Andover: W. F. Draper